According to the integrated time measuring program, or clock as it was usually referred to, Jack had spent a bit over twelve hours in the ashen desert, under the blazing heat of a purple sun. Though, he didn't feel much heat in the desert at all, if anything, it was a comfortable temperature, even when the climate control of the power armor was inactive. Oddly enough, the desert didn't have any mirages, the sun was high, and didn't seem to be moving from it's position, making Jack wonder if the simulation was set to an eternal day, instead of the more common eternal night, but he didn't care too much at this moment, instead biding his time before he would crush the skull of whoever was responsible. If anything, he would have preferred a simple ecchi story with barely any plot and minimal RPG elements to the survivalist paradise.

His stomach rumbled, all of a sudden indicating that it was time to take the nutriment intake, much to his surprise. Simulations were quite advanced in the current day and age, but he quickly dismissed the idea. The most reasonable explanation would be that he was hungry in real life, and the people taking care of his needs, or machinery, would soon administer the required solutions in order to sate his thirst and hunger. But, it wouldn't be a survivalist paradise if he didn't have to take care of his needs in simulation as well. Shrugging, he took another nutriment pill from the storage compartment and quickly swallowed it. Even if the pill was quickly swallowed, it still had terrible taste due to the preservatives coating it, but it was better than nutrition bars, as their taste and texture was close to compressed beetles, thankfully without crunchy carapace, or there would be less recruits in his organization.

The only downside for these pills, however, was the fact one required more water intake. He didn't know the ins and outs of why this was so, but it was usually advised to dissolve the nutriment pill in water, in order to reduce the negative consequences of ingesting the pill, or at least was it down with at least half a liter of water, better with a full liter however.

Sighing, Jack opened the shop menu, which was finally slightly less cluttered, and even with a search function, now that he closed up most of the pop up windows. He thought of what he needed, and the window quickly popped up.

Bottled Water

1 SC

A plastic cylindrical container for holding liquids. This one has drinkable water inside.

Nodding, he pressed confirm, but instead of having the credits substracted, another message appeared.

Unable to purchase item.

Reason: No storage unit available.

Jack looked confused at the information and sighed. He had a storage compartment inside his armor, which should be large enough to house even some of the heavier rifles in his collection, and even if it wasn't completely empty, it should've had enough space left over to store a bottle of water. But, if it was a fantasy survivalist simulation with microtransactions, he had to get some sort of inventory item. The only problem would be the cost of such an item, or ability. Looking through the shop for anything related to said inventory, Jack got a search result that was as common as the whales, and by whales he meant idiots spending thousands in shitty games like this one.

Inventory

1 ST

Allows Storage of items into the personal space. Items stored there can't be accessed by anyone but the user. Linked to soul and will be accessible after reincarnation. Have unlimited space and the style of it will depend upon user's preferences.

Requires: Space Affinity

“Which means even more microtransaction down the line. Typical Nanotech bullshit.” Jack sighed, and pressed selected the entry. But unlike most games on the market, there was no glow, fanfares, and a giant squid didn't fall from the skies. The only witnesses were Jack and his character sheet, sporting a new entry in the ability tab.

Name:

Jack

Delgado

Race:

Homunculus

Class:

None

Titles:

Inquisitor

UP: 10

SC: 1000

ST: 1

Level:

0/10

HP:

1'087/1'087

MP:

955/955

Traits

Stubborn, Tough, Esper

Abilities

Grimoire, Soul Siphon, Conversion, Inventory

Bloodlines

Primary: Human; Secondary: None; Tertiary: None;

Strength

23

Constitution

24

Vitality

26

Agility

26

Dexterity

22

Perception

29

Focus

31

Willpower

56

Attunement

11

Charisma

12

Psyche

14

Luck

73

Fire

Water

Earth

Air

Light

Darkness

Life

Death

15

10

10

10

5

25

5

15

Summoning

Time

Void

Space

Soul

0

0

0

0

5

He still hadn't decided on what to spend the points, but from playing around with them, they were more or less straightforward. Attributes or 'Stats' as he usually referred to them in games, were simple to a fault, although instead of willpower and intelligence, the magic was defined by Focus, Willpower and Attunement, defining mana capacity, regeneration and magic power, though saying that they only affected one field would be wrong, as each attribute affected all three fields, even if not as strongly as their main aspect. Same was true with Strength, Constitution and Vitality, though it once again would be wrong to say that only these three were affecting his physical prowess, as Agility and Dexterity helped with that as well, only they didn't affect his health pool. Perception, alongisde Dexterity and Agility, was used to be better coordinated, in theory. In practice, he didn't feel much, as he wasn't going to spend his points on them just yet.

Shrugging, Jack decided to increase his highest attribute, mostly because it was luck, and he wanted to have more random encounters in the simulation, otherwise it would be rather boring staying in the desert for long.

Not ten minutes had passed since he spent the points in luck, and he was already rewarded with the random encounter, or what might have been a random encounter, with sounds of fighting up ahead, and once he was atop the dune, he spotted the combatants. These were various demon breeds he had encountered during the data extraction mission in an underwater base, but at that time, demons didn't fight eachother, instead preferring to slaughter humans, or be slaughtered by the reinforcements. He still had a bone to pick with these creatures, and so was somewhat pleasantly surprised that someone managed to recreate a demon in the simulation, though they seemed to be a bit too similar to eachother.

Shrugging, Jack stood about a kilometer away from the battlefield, and used his zooming function to observe whatever was going on there. It seemed obvious that rushing at them would be suicidal, and he didn't want to get any penalties for having his avatar killed in tutorial area. Usually games didn't introduce much penalties during tutorial, but not the 'freemium' games. And this simulation in particular looked a lot like a freemium, and if he were to be realistic, the only company with enough resources to pull something like this was Nanotech. Black Hand was unlikely to explore this particular market, not lucrative enough.

Looking through the visor, Jack observed how the floating demons from the first uncorrupted part of the video were commanding a bunch of smaller, yellowish-brown demons, that were a bit too easily killed by the big, burly, gray demons, with their mouths locating at their abdomens. Deciding to call them Floaters, Grunts and Belly-mouths respectively, Jack deployed his LR-19c rifle, and took aim. He wasn't going to shoot just yet, if the demons were keen on killing eachother, then who was he to interfere at the moment? He was a mercenary, and mercenaries preferred to scope in after the two sides done fighting and kill them off, before returning to the employer and getting paid twice as much for half the effort. At least, he would have preferred that way, but instead the bonuses were rarely higher than 40%, if any.

Sighing and noticing that the Belly-mouth demons seemed to have the upper hand, Jack prepared to shoot the one in the middle of their group, when the Floaters retreated slightly further, and a circle of fire appeared under the Belly-mouth demons, covering them in flames and, what seemed like, claws. Upon zooming in a bit more, Jack noticed that it there were even more of those Grunts, and they seemed to be oddly careless. A single Belly-mouth was capable of tearing through Grunts at an alarming speed, but it seemed that when it was ten or more grunts per gray demons, the Belly-mouths succumbed to the onslaught, as the fearless creatures went in their mouths willingly, in order to kill at least one of them.

After observing the fight some more, Jack noted that the amount of grunts seemed to be always around a hundred or so, despite all the casualties suffered from the claws of Belly-mouth demons. Jack sighed, and as the last Belly-mouth demon fell to the Grunts, he prepared to shoot the six Floater demons, of course, moving on to the Grunts later. Steadying himself, Jack pulled the trigger, and saw how one of the six Floaters lost it's head and fell from the air, with it's purple blood spilling in the sand. What was more surprising, was the fact that there was a commotion amongst Grunts, as they tore into eachother, before some of them turned into a puddle of brown goo.

Jack let himself become puzzled for a second, before getting a grip on himself and shot another floater in the head, which repeated the process, and now with even more demons turning into brown goo. That felt odd, considering that the corpses of Floaters and Belly-mouths weren't turning into a liquid after death, but he would test the simulation later, as he had four more floaters to kill. Three, now that the third one had half of it's head missing.

Some of the Grunts seemed to roar as they charged at Jack's position, while the floaters seemed to retreat, but Jack was having none of it. He was fighting demons, and he'll be damned if any demon would escape him. They were experience, they would bring him levels, and this will let him leave the tutorial area. And the faster he would do it, the faster he will get in contact with whoever started this mess.

It took him one more second to shoot his fourth, and four more seconds to deal with Floater five and six, which resulted in Gruntsfighting eachother, much to Jack's surprise. He started thinking that killing floaters first was the right thing to do, as Grunts were a bit too easily distracted by fighting. And they seemed to turn into brown goo whenever they were killed. Except that after a minute of fighting, a single Grunt remained, with it's remaining dangling helplessly arm it looked worse for wear. Jack prepared to shoot the creature in the head as well, but before he could pull the trigger, the creature's form melted down into a brown goo and mixed with the goo that was provided by it's brethren.

“What the fuck was that?” Jack looked astonishingly at the massive pool of brown ooze in front of him, as he neared it to check his kills. “Seriously, why just erase them after the battle, if you're going to make their corpses disappear anyway?” Jack sighed moving through the liquid, which seemed to be absorbed by his armor, causing slight interference in the image. “Whoever dsigned the enemies here did a tolerable job as to representing the demons, but I say it's a fail regarding corpse disposal... wait, am I a beta tester? Guys, you know, I am a fucking billionaire now, so I don't want to play early pre alpha games, right?” Jack asked no one in particular as he walked through the quickly disappearing ooze, up to the once floating demons.

“Sigh. Look, the demons are sure really look like the ones in my footage, I give you that. But why can't you guys be a bit more realistic about this shit? Look, my boot passes through their bodies with no resistance, it's lame.” Jack said as he stomped on the corpse of a demon multiple times. “Are they getting compacted when I stomp on them or something?” Jack asked as he noticed the lack of blood on his boots, and kicked the corpse, only for it to paint the sand purple. “Sigh, I guess I can play with it... conversion should 'convert' corpses into in game currency, right?” Jack asked and thought about activating it on the corpse. “Don't tell me I need something else to do with it? Like putting it inside my inventory?” Jack sighed and touched the corpse with his hand. “How do I even put it inside my inventory?” Jack asked as the corpse shined for a brief second before disappearing.

Demon (Floater) converted

SC gained

311

Jack looked at the appeared box and shrugged. It might have been a bug in the simulation, but he wasn't against exploiting bugs in games, he never liked grinding for any materials anyway. But he wondered if the Floaters would cost 311 credits per corpse, then how much would burly demons cost?

But it seemed that only the first demon cost 311 credits, the next one he 'converted' provided him with 303 credits, second would provide him with 348, and the one with half head missing 215. It was odd, as the demons looked the same, except for the injuries.

“So, random payment? Sigh, I knew it's Nanotech.” Jack said and moved on to the big burly wide mouthed demons. “No, Seriously, I get 1762 credits from demons that are supposed to give on average 300, right? All because the one with half it's head missing would cost 215? Do I need to destroy 90% of the body to get 900% increase in payout?!” Jack shouted in frustration. “Buggy mess this simulation is what it is. Sigh. Whatever.” Jack looked at the thirty odd demon corpses and started converting them one by one, gaining messages that he acquired credits from each converted demon, ending with 10'166 credits gained from 37 demons. “Now... I am thirsty. I want water. Can you now give it to me, or should I get some other storage, huh?” Jack was getting annoyed as he saw the message.

Bottled Water

1 SC

A plastic cylindrical container for holding liquids. This one has drinkable water inside.

Total Cost 1 SC

Jack sighed. At least now he had something to drink. Only now he had to find out how to access his so called 'inventory'. If he was unable to access it however, there was still a puddle of goo on the ground, but he would prefer not to drink that.